Tina Tsang’s designs fit snugly into the
school of combining striking imagery with everyday items. In Tina’s case, this
involves combing long ballerina-esque legs with delicate ceramic tea cups, tea
pots and more in her Blaue Blume range.
The success she has seen with her designs
took her to ICFF in New York this year. “It was probably the best show I’ve
done,” says Tine. “ I took about 70 pieces and they had cleaned me out within
three days, I could have sold more stock if I had been able to take it. They
were taking orders too, I’ve got about 20 orders and 50 retailers to follow up.“
As you can imagine, Tina’s designs have
opened up a world of selling opportunities both online and in stores – Macy’s
showed interest on her latest stateside visit. With all of her online retail experiences,
she believes that the Hidden Art online Shop model is the best she has
encountered.
“Hidden Art has been the best website for
me. Other online shops take different percentages, but then hit you with weird
charges, suddenly saying, for example, ‘you have to pay your fees for the rest
of the year now, which is £90’. And Hidden Art has an easier method for
submitting your products and seems better organised than most other
places. It is the steadiest seller for
me as well. Their link with PR Girl is
great, because they get me press, and once I have press I get sales.“
“I know lots of people from Hidden Art.
Helen Johansson, another Hidden Art member, made the models for all of my designs.
I don’t know that much about ceramics myself – I used to be an animator. But it
was Reiko Kaneko who told me about Hidden Art. She has done shows with Hidden
Art and she was on the E-Shop so she convinced me to join.”
Tina has had products on the Hidden Art
E-Shop since November 2007, initially going live with her distinctive teacups.
Since then Tina has added more products to
www.hiddenartshop.com as the variety in
her products has developed. “I had to build up the Blaue Blume range,” she
says, “because catering companies requested more and more items from me.”
“They still are actually, which is quite
scary really because I don’t want to be designing tea sets for the rest of my
life.”
Blaue Blume’s most recent addition is the
new gold shoes design, which has been selling at an almost alarming rate.” It is a
small addition of a colour popular within the group of people who like the cups,”
says Tina.
“I’m working on a red variety too, which
will be out for Christmas. Red and gold seem to be the strongest colours, so I don’t think I will bring too
many other colours in. One guy with a little studio makes my teacups, he
produces loads of them. It is great having ceramics done in the UK, the less
distance they have to travel the less chance of them breaking. I’m getting more
and more orders so I might have to move production if the orders get too big.”
